Inspiring, chilling, haunting words out of one of the first towns of liberated Iraq …
All through the day here, as American and British tanks and troop carriers rumbled through the town on their drive on the nearby city of Basra, the town of Safwan seemed to celebrate the collapse of Mr. Hussein’s local rule with a glance over its shoulder.
Only hours before, they said, the Mukhabarat, Mr. Hussein’s security force, had held Safwan in a state of near permanent terror. Even now, the villagers said, Mr. Hussein’s agents were still among them, waiting, as they did twelve years ago, for their moment to return.
“There, there are Saddam’s men, and if you leave me they will kill me right now,” said a trembling Najah Neema, an Iraqi soldier, who said he had torn off his uniform and thrown down his gun and ran away as the American army approached at dawn.
Like many townspeople here, Mr. Neema feared that the Americans would lose their will, as they had in 1991, when an American-encouraged uprising across southern Iraq fell before a withering assault by Mr. Hussein’s regime that drew no American riposte.
This from a late article by Dexter Filkins in the Times …
